Brent Larsen hopes to get a healthy bite when he casts his Omega Crunch line into the Dragon’s Den later this month.

"We want to take our company to the next level," Larsen, president of Steep Hill Solutions of Halifax, said Friday.

"We’re looking for an investor and definitely the national exposure is going to be great for our products. And I really am looking for their opinion on our company.

"Even though it’s on national TV, it’ll be great just to get that feedback from some experienced businesspeople."

Larsen is a fan of the CBC-TV show in which entrepreneurs and inventors pitch their products and ideas to the Dragons, a panel of veteran businesspeople who are often brutally honest in their critiques — sometimes to the shock of the contestants.

"I think that’s part of the fun of the show. You really don’t know what will happen and I think that’s why people like it so much, the unpredictability of it and just the rawness of it."

Larsen has been practising his pitch in front of business associates. He has tweaked it since first presenting it to his wife, kids and babysitter.

"Looking down at five blank faces with no reaction, I knew I had to switch it," he said.

He got tips from a previous contestant during his second round of auditions in Toronto and learned a lot from the show. "You have to come up with a reasonable valuation for the company and you have to have a succinct presentation where we know the numbers and everything else, but there has to be some sort of entertainment value, too."

Larsen started selling Omega Crunch — a combination of shelled flax seed grown in Western Canada and Nova Scotia maple syrup — at the Halifax farmers market in 2007. The product eventually made its way to the shelves of Pete’s Frootique and is now also found at Sobeys.

Last year, the company launched a new flavour, roasted garlic, developed by a class of nutrition students at Acadia University.

"That’s going to be a big bonus for us is our track record and the fact that people really like our product and we’ve been building a brand and we believe we have a good brand," Larsen said.

He won’t say how much his company has earned but said there has been steady growth that has allowed him to hire a salesperson in Halifax, an administrator and a handful of contract salespeople across Canada. The company also contracts Flowercart in New Minas, an organization that trains and employs people with special needs, to package and label Omega Crunch.

It’s these partnerships and Larsen’s "people first" philosophy that have brought the company this far, he said.

The Dragon’s Den segment on Omega Crunch is set to film at the end of the month, but Larsen isn’t allowed to talk about the outcome until the episode airs in the fall.

As he prepares to enter the Dragon’s Den, Larsen said he has a healthy dose of nerves but is confident in his product.

"It’s just a big break. I don’t believe there’s much downside for us. I think it’s just a really good opportunity and we’ll just lay the cards on the table and see what happens."